Ask HN: How do you send mails from Amazon EC2?

8 points by maconic 16 years ago | 8 comments

I'm using Amazon EC2 to host a web server, but Amazon EC2's IP address space is blocked by Trend Micro MAPS DUL (http://securecloud.com/help/en/about_the_dul.html). Given that sending emails from a web server is often necessary, I need a way to send emails from the web server. I was using the Google Apps SMTP server for this until our website had enough users that we passed the Google Apps daily email limit. So now I'm looking for an alternative way to send emails. I'm sure many other YC News readers have encountered this... any suggestions?

Clarification: I don't mean email marketing services like ConstantContact.com but rather mail servers that can be used directly from our web server to send email notifications.

Magneus 16 years ago |

I'm not sure who to recommend you to for an immediate solution, but it looks like Amazon is in the process of putting together an in-house SMTP service: http://mailchannels.com/contact/ec2-outbound-inquiry.html

wrs 16 years ago |

If you're willing to risk going over a vague TOS restriction (no "excessive" usage), try fusemail.com.

If you want to pay for certainty, some standard SMTP services are: Sendgrid, AuthSMTP, fastmail.fm.

RobGR 16 years ago |

What you really need is an smtp relay, on a fixed IP, carefully configured to relay only from your hosts and on a reputable block of IP addresses.

That is entirely possible. The server itself does not have to be very extreme, the lowest end Rackspace cloud or Godaddy server should do it, it all just comes down to if those IP addresses are blocked too.

The real problem is that you will spend too much time figuring out reverse DNS, SPF records, and all kind of email trivia. I'm not sure it's really worth it. How many customers do you lose if you just ignore the problem ?

If you can't just ignore the problem, get a host on a reputable block of IPs and hire a freelance sys admin to set up and baby the system. You will want to monitor bounce rates and other metrics and fix problems as they arise.

jsatok 16 years ago | |

I was seeing a relatively high (30% or so) open rate on emails, but knew there was a deliverability problem because friends and family were reporting not getting my daily emails (my site automatically sends out an email every day at 9am). I'm now using SendGrid, getting an open rate of over 50% (yeah, it's nuts!), and I don't need to worry about DNS, SPF, etc. I highly recommend SendGrid.

scraplab 16 years ago |

We use AuthSMTP.

http://www.authsmtp.com/

garyrichardson 16 years ago | |

Seconded.

Also see http://pauldowman.com/2008/02/17/smtp-mail-from-ec2-web-serv...

rksprst 16 years ago |

We're going to be using SendGrid http://www.sendgrid.com

bhiggins 16 years ago |

We have Postini already, so we decided to relay through them. Also, I noticed that my emails were blocked before I had an elastic IP, but after I got an elastic IP address they weren't. YMMV.